3.6 Delay Lines and Halt Lines

A delay line begins with an “at” sign ‘@’, and contains a
single numeric value; a number of seconds to pause before continuing
on to process further lines. The
reseq program will obey these instructions only if it is
given the --replay option.

@ 3.0051

Delay lines are only issued by teseq when it has been given
the -t option, which uses a timing file from
‘script -t’ to determine where to insert delays. Aside from that,
delay lines can be useful for manual insertion into Teseq
output, to introduce a delay at a particular point when using
‘reseq --replay’, which can aid in giving the user time to more
easily observe terminal behavior.

If a line begins with three “at” signs together ‘@@@’, and
reseq is invoked with both ‘--replay’ and
‘--halts’, then reseq will pause at this location
until the user presses a key to indicate continuation. The remainder
of the line will be ignored, so can be used for comments.

Such a line will never be output by teseq; it must be
inserted by the user. Since reseq does not give any
indication to the user that it is awaiting input (as opposed to simply
waiting on a length delay line), it is highly advisable to insert this
“halt” line only after a spot in the recorded terminal script that
already provides such an indication.

The halt line can be useful for creating animated demonstrations of
program usage, and similar sorts of presentation-oriented scripts.